A floor color you can call your own

Start designing your room from the ground up. Wood floors can add beauty and value to any home. With wood care products your floors will be durable and beautiful.

What Type of a Wood Floor is Best for My Kitchen?

Wood Species
Go with the hardest species you can find. Oak and ash are some of the strongest domestic wood species used in the manufacture of wood floors. Rich grain and exquisite texture of these species will not only make the floor look beautiful and unique, but also help disguise small dents and scratches that are bound to occur over time.

Surface Texture
Wood floors with a light texture and a polished finish are gorgeous, but will they look just as spotlessly perfect after a few pots, pans, and jars have been dropped on your floor? Probably not, which is why highly textured wood species and wire brushed finishes work so well in kitchens and other high trafficked areas. If anything, the floor only ends up looking better over time!

Installing Hardwood Flooring In a KitchenIn a kitchen, you want to make sure that you purchase a very dense, durable hardwood, and stay away from softwood floors that will be more prone to water damage and staining issues.

Finish Options for Natural Wood FlooringThe protective coat created by this process is much more potent than anything that can be applied on site and can last up to five times longer than traditional self-applied finishes.

Maintaining Hardwood Floors In a KitchenThe most important thing that you can do to maintain your hardwood kitchen floors is to keep constant vigilance over them. You can test the finish on the floor by pouring a very small amount of water on it in some of the most highly trafficked areas. If it beads up the finish is fine.

How To Care for a Hardwood Floor
The drawback is that the refinishing process is a big, messy job. It involves taking almost everything out of the kitchen and then bringing in big, loud equipment that sends sawdust flying through the air in every direction.

The Advantages of Hardwood In KitchensHardwood provides you with a softer, more yielding surface to stand on than most tile and hard surface flooring options. This also makes it less likely that items will shatter if accidentally dropped.

Floods and Leaks in KitchensUnfortunately, each utensil that ties into the plumbing of your house, is a potential disaster waiting to happen. Small leaks can cause standing puddles, that will wear through the finish and seep down cracks to rot the floor from within.​​

Let's just cut to the chase: I'm here to tell you that spaghetti with meat sauce in the Instant Pot is nothing short of life-changing — and the very best thing to come out of my kitchen this year.

But I know what you're thinking: Spaghetti ... in the Instant Pot? Pressure cookers are great for things like quickly breaking down tough cuts of meat, but something as simple and classic as pasta (which is already pretty easy to make) seems like it's best left on the stovetop. For the uninitiated, Instant Pot pasta just seems a little weird and unnecessary, right? Wrong.

Instant Pot spaghetti is way easier, faster, and, arguably, tastier than the version you make on the stovetop. It's almost entirely hands-off; there's no constant stirring or waiting for a big pot of water to boil. Instead, after quickly browning some beef directly in the Instant Pot, you'll just toss in a jar of marinara sauce, a little water, and the dry spaghetti. In about 20 minutes of cooking (yes, including bringing the pot to pressure) actual magic happens: The meat becomes tender and the pasta lends its starch to the sauce, making the most luxurious version of this weeknight classic that...

If you're young, you've likely never given much thought and certainly never purchased denture tablets before. But it turns out that they can do plenty more than clean dentures. You can use denture cleaner to get rid of everything from coffee stains to clogged drains at home — using nothing more than a couple of tablets at a time.

I love a good no-bake cookie because they often come with the promise of a short ingredient list, with chocolate taking the lead. These sweet bites from Dorie Greenspan deliver such a treat. Perfect for Christmas, Hanukkah, Passover, and all the days before, after, and in between, these morsels are spun together from melted chocolate, a bit of butter, and crushed matzo cookies.

If you love food (and we're guessing you do, simply because you're on this website!), you probably wouldn't mind a few food-themed ornaments on your Christmas tree. Probably something a little more creative than the classic pickle ornament, right? That's where we (and the sellers on Etsy) come in!

We combed through the site to find the very best food-themed ornaments — the ones that go a little beyond knitted doughnuts and burgers. Here are five of the coolest, most creative and ooh-inducing options we could find.

Two summers ago, less than six months after an eBay bidding war over a Flamin' Hot Cheeto resembling Harambe (the late Cincinnati Zoo gorilla turned Internet meme) reached upwards of $100,000, I found myself standing in a hall of mirrors filled with an assortment of oddly shaped Flamin' Hot Cheetos submitted by people all across the country. The cheese dust-covered oddities were affixed to mini pedestals in plexi-glass display cases just begging for tourists of the most highly trafficked area of New York City to Instagram them.

It was there, in a limited-time-only Cheetos exhibit in a corner of the Times Square Ripley's Believe It Or Not!, that I asked myself: How on earth did we get here? Let's look at the facts.

A lot of my childhood memories revolve around going to the grocery store with my dad. And not just any grocery store — we always went to Rodman's Discount Store. Established in 1955, and family-run (first by founder, Leonard Rodman, and then by his sons, Roy and Yale), Rodman's has long been a Washington, D.C. landmark — and a uniquely peculiar retail spot.

It's hard to describe without just having you walk into the store, but here goes: They sell everything under the sun and also, seemingly, whatever they feel like.

Every single year, despite my best efforts to plan ahead, I wind up with a lot of last-minute gifts to buy. As hard as this is to admit, when absolute desperation strikes there's one last resort: the grocery store. (Please make me feel better and say that you've been there too.)

While perusing my local Trader Joe's for some fun holiday finds, I found one grocery store gift that is, dare I say, actually kind of cool and might just save my butt in a pinch: the chocolate passport.

I get it: Sometimes when you go grocery shopping, you're in a rush or maybe you're just really hungry, and some of the cultural etiquette everybody has picked up over the years goes straight out of the window. You see a cluster of grapes and you just want a quick sample before committing to the whole bag. You think you want that bunch of carrots but while browsing the other aisles you decide you want the cookies instead and the carrots get left behind. We all do it, even though we know it's wrong.

And if you think that everyone is judging this naughty behavior, you're right: A recent survey asked shoppers to reveal the most inappropriate grocery-store behaviors and the participants did not hold back.

Leave it up to Dorie Greenspan, the doyenne of cookies, to come up with a new way to get your blondie fix. She starts with a classic dough — full of butter, more brown sugar than white, and a handful of mix-ins — that make this recipe distinctly her own.

The real trick with these blondies, however, is how you bake them. Hold off on your trusty baking pan because a muffin tin is truly the better way for this classic cookie treat.

Need a suggestion on what to ask for this holiday season? Let the stars be your guide. Aliza Kelly Faragher, Allure magazine's resident astrologer and the author of The Mixology of Astrology: Cosmic Cocktail Recipes for Every Sign, gave us her tips for finding the right present based on your zodiac sign.

Hope you've been good this year because you're going to want in on these fun, sign-specific gifts.

Now that Thanksgiving is so far gone, it's about time we traded pumpkin spice for peppermint, no? At least, that's what it feels like happened overnight at Trader Joe's. I hit my favorite grocery store up on Black Friday while I was visiting my parents and the shelves were brimming with Christmas cookies and other seasonal snacks.

I tried five of Trader Joe's newest holiday treats — all of which I bought with Christmas morning breakfast and cozy nights by the fireplace in mind. Here's what I thought of each new item.

If you don't already have a Vitamix, chances are it's been on your wish list for a long, long time. And what's not to love (or lust) about 'em? As the gold standard of blenders, they're perfect for whipping up nut butters, salsas, and frozen margaritas.

But while Vitamix is arguably one of the best — if not, the best — blender brands on the market, it's not the cheapest. Most models will set you back a couple hundred dollars, so it's a good idea to wait until they go on sale. There was a flash deal for just 24 hours over Black Friday, but if you missed it, now is a great time to act.

It's easy to reach for a paper towel to clean up just about every mess — they're so handy! But just because something is convenient doesn't mean it's the best tool for the job. I'm definitely reaching for a paper towel to clean up chicken juice or a pet accident, but not all messes require a single-use item — and not all surfaces respond well to paper, either.

The magical combination of butter and garlic never gets old, and it's just the ticket when you want an easy mushroom side dish that goes with steak, chicken, or even fish. Meaty whole mushrooms mingle with gently browning butter, and some garlic and fresh thyme get tossed into the skillet at the end to deliciously perfume the browned beauties.

With just four ingredients and some salt and pepper, you can be diving into this fast and fancy side dish any night of the week in just about 15 minutes.

I can't speak to the vegan aspect, but when it comes to comfort food, it's hard to beat a creamy bowl of polenta. When I was a kid, my Italian great aunt used to serve made-from-scratch polenta in every possible form, and although she was typically swaddled in a shawl, she had to have some Schwarzenegger-worthy arms from the amount of time she spent stirring it with a wooden spoon.

When I first started getting a CSA box, I was overwhelmed by all the vegetables I was getting every week. There seemed to only be so many ways to make a side dish or add greens to a recipe. One day it finally clicked: I can cook a recipe built around the vegetables.

Vegetarian dinners can be just as satisfying and filling, if not more so, than dishes that contain meat. Whether you want quick-and-easy tacos, corn-filled mac and cheese, or breakfast for dinner, you're sure to find a few new vegetarian recipes to add to your weekly rotation here.

Welcome to Snapshot Cooking, the home of Kitchn's easiest recipes. These mini recipes are so simple you can practically cook from the before-and-after snapshot itself.

When you think of shortcut cookies, do you find yourself staring at shelves of chilled cookie dough? While a log of dough is certainly tempting, there's a better option just a few aisles away. Whether you need freshly-baked cookies for bake sales, cookie swaps, birthday parties, or after-school snacks, head to the baking aisle and grab a box of cake mix.

After running out to purchase these cauliflower pancakes (aka latkes), heating them up in our kitchen convection oven, and wafting the scent of crispy Parmesan throughout the office, my coworkers were dying to know: Where did I get these?

"Cauliflower Joe's," I told them. "I mean Trader Joe's!" My bad ... but honestly, the more that I think about it, maybe Trader Joe's should consider rebranding to Cauliflower Joe's, as they're swapping the crucifer in for just about everything these days. We've seen it all — pizza crust, gnocchi, rice, mashed potatoes, the works — so I guess it makes perfect sense that the latke would be next?

The contrast between vibrant crimson cake and stark-white icing makes red velvet cake one of the most eye-catching desserts. And with the help of one of our favorite supermarket shortcuts, you can get the same effect with a lot less effort.

December is prime cookie season, so while you're decking the halls in red and green (or, come February, baking treats for a Valentine's celebration), don't forget to include the festive hue with a bite-sized take on red velvet cake. Yes, you can make cookies with the signature velvety texture and mild cocoa flavor you'd expect from red velvet cake with a box of cake mix and three pantry staples!

We all know what it's like to come home hungry at the end of a long day and not want to spend a ton of time in the kitchen. Instead, we'll turn to our default dinners — the fast, familiar bites we can toss together with whatever's in our fridge or pantry (with bonus points if the end result is quick, cheap, and, of course, delicious).

And famous food figures — from chefs, to TV hosts, to bloggers — feel that way too. After often spending entire days cooking with or thinking about food, it's no surprise that when they get home, they also have their shortcut suppers to fall back on. All month long, we're asking them to share them with us.

Up first? Nigella Lawson, the effortlessly chic TV host, food writer, and business woman who we'd all love to share a meal with. We chatted with her about her standby lazy dinner (yes, it's true, even Nigella feels lazy sometimes!): a smart, inexpensive, and satisfying veggie bowl that comes together in no time at all. It's full of hearty textures, like roasted veggies and crunchy nuts, and flavors, like salty sardines and zesty lemon. Best of all? The whole thing is super...

Who among us hasn't at one time or another claimed that we have the absolute weirdest, most embarrassing family in America? Especially around the holidays, when all the uncles and cousins and aunts from out of town gather in one claustrophobic space, all those eccentricities we complain about but secretly love are on full display. In the age of social media, it's easy to expose all their unconventional — if you want to put it generously — habits.

Probably aware that there are plenty of people out there eager to prove just how goofy their families are, Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon decided to mine Twitter for the best stories about weird Thanksgiving habits, and the results did not disappoint.

The most delicious food holiday is nearly upon us. If you're still deciding what to cook, this lineup of recipes is a good place to start — you cannot go wrong with anything on this list. From the main course to all the fixings, these are our most popular Thanksgiving recipes of all time.

If you're wondering if your holiday table really needs another creamy casserole, let me tell you emphatically that the answer is yes.

My kids are pretty generous eaters, but on Thanksgiving, with so many different dishes from different cooks, even the familiar feels strange. This comforting broccoli and cheese casserole is made specifically for them, for that reason, but will delight everyone else at the table too. Tender broccoli gets smothered in a creamy, tangy cheese sauce, then topped with butter crackers and more cheese for a side dish as welcome on your holiday table as it will be on a Tuesday night in February. Here's the five-ingredient broccoli casserole your whole family will love.

We start to drool at the very mention of pie. But what really gets us in trouble is that first glimpse of shiny, golden-brown pie crust. We just know it's going to be good. Here's how you can get a perfect, drool-worthy golden pie crust every time.

If you have been on Pinterest for any amount of time, you may have come across the trendy apple rose design seen on cupcakes, pies, tarts, and more. It's not hard to see the appeal of it, but I wanted to know: Is it really all that easy to do?

We all know that certain heavy-hitter dishes — like classic turkey, hearty stuffing, or ultra-buttery mashed potatoes — tend to steal the spotlight at Thanksgiving. But as you get ready to finalize your holiday menu, I urge you not to forget the bread. Despite an already-packed table, there's always room for a bread basket.

They're a great counterpoint to everything else on the table, and bread also holds the (very important!) duty of helping mop up all that extra gravy. So from pillowy soft dinner classics, to fancy 12-layer rolls flecked with fresh herbs, to a gluten-free version everyone will enjoy, here are several bread recipes that deserve a place on your Thanksgiving table.

This delicately sweet and warmly spiced pumpkin cake tastes just as gorgeous as it looks, and bakes up tender and moist. The cake itself is designed to be flat (making it easy to roll), and you'll spread it with just the right amount of cream cheese frosting to help hold the spiral shape in place.

We know rolled cakes can be a little intimidating, which is why we're sharing all our secrets for rolling a cake with no cracks, and filling it with just the right amount of frosting so it doesn't spill out the sides. Plus, we've got a few make-ahead tips that help make this pumpkin roll absolutely foolproof.

Whether you knew it or not, you've likely already eaten some version of chess pie. This category of pie is responsible for favorites like pecan pie, Derby pie, and even Christina Tosi's infamous Crack pie. At their most basic, chess pies are just sugar, eggs, and butter baked into a soft, custard-like consistency.

Buttermilk chess pie is a classic American pie, with its chess pie roots in England and its buttermilk twang bred in the South. Chess pies aren't as popular as they once were — your Grandmother probably knows them by heart, but your own parents less so — but their ease and scrappiness, partnered with their revelatory deliciousness means they're due for a modern comeback. Here's how to make a classic buttermilk chess pie that is better than anything Grandma might have baked.

Air fryers might seem like an appliance you can pass over if you're not regularly deep-frying chicken, but that's not quite the case. The device, which looks like something that might be mistaken for a UFO if it landed on your doorstep, is great for a number of tasks, including dessert. Even better, the mode of cooking — circulating hot air — allows for even, quick cooking without any fussing or flipping on your end. In other words, it might be just what your weeknight dinner routine is missing.

See All Our Coverage of the Biggest Sales Week of the Year Here

Intrigued? Today is a great day to grab one. Philips Viva Airfryer, usually $250, is only $100 as part of Amazon's lead up to Black Friday. But this deal won't last — it expires midnight P.T.

There's nothing like coming home and opening up a bottle of wine in your kitchen — unless you happen to be less than thrilled with your space. Scientific research has proven over and over again that the way your house looks, including the colors it's painted, the amount of light it gets, how cluttered it is, and even its ceiling height can affect your stress levels and overall feeling of contentment.

The good news is that you don't need to give your space a drastic overhaul to inject a little bit of cheer. These ideas are simple, cost less than $20 (or nothing at all!), and for the most part are actually fun to do.

This colorful salad is an oldie but goodie, and a variation of another favorite of mine, my Roasted Beet and Barley Salad. I love the bright pops of golden beets and red onions mixed in with the barley and wilted chard stems. It's all tied together with a quick lemony dressing and topped with a sprinkle of salty feta.

One of my favorite aisles to browse at Costco is in, you guessed it, the wine section. I'm a value-oriented wine shopper (please don't call me cheap), so I tend to skip right past the fancy-looking wooden crates of wine priced at more than $20 and head to the shelves, which are typically loaded with more affordable wines. I get a thrill when I see my mother-in-law's favorite pinot grigio on sale before she's coming for a visit, or when the malbec we like pops up right before we have guests coming for dinner.

Curious about how they keep the prices so good — and where I might find the best value — I did some digging. While Costco was not able to comment on the specifics of how they source and price their wine, I was assured that their offerings are "carefully chosen by [their] team of expert buyers who work with respected winemakers and wineries around the globe to offer Costco members very good wine from the best wine regions in the world at exceptionally good prices."

Here are seven things I learned about Costco's wine. Did you know these things?

Thanksgiving is a time for plates piled high with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pie, and much more. In short: it's a day of feasting at its finest. But in the mix of all those ultra-comforting side dishes, I also like to include the option for something a little lighter — like a fresh and vibrant salad — to balance out the heartier, heavier dishes.

These 20 colorful salads will show you it's worth making room for a bright spot on the Thanksgiving table in the form of a refreshing salad — like an arugula, pear, and blue cheese salad; or a kale and apple salad with warm pancetta vinaigrette. For any with more delicate greens, remember to dress them right before serving to make sure everything stays crisp.

Just as there are extreme couponers, there are extremely bad couponers. These are people (like me) who get excited about coupons, clip them out, carry them around for a while or put them in a pile and promptly … don't think about them again until way after the expiration date. Bummer!

While this can seem like a waste, it can also be an opportunity to help someone out who might not have access to coupons — specifically, our troops overseas who are shopping at government-run commissaries on our military bases. This opportunity is actually very easy to take advantage of.

Sorry, Cyber Monday, but it appears your reign was brief. These days, online shopping deals are launching earlier and earlier, and now Cyber Monday has to share billing with an entire cyber week of deals, starting the Monday before Thanksgiving. That includes Amazon, of course, which actually launched early Black Friday deals on November 1. (Christmas isn't the only thing that comes earlier and earlier these days.) Now that Black Friday week is officially here, they're rolling out even more deals, every day.

See All Our Coverage of the Biggest Sales Week of the Year Here

See below for our favorite picks. We'll keep updating as more are made available.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons you might want to skip the traditional sweet potato casserole topping of caramelized, gooey marshmallows. Maybe you're welcoming a vegan or vegetarian to the table, or you want to eat less sugar during the holidays, or maybe you're one of those folks who just doesn't like marshmallows!

Luckily, sweet potato casserole doesn't hinge on a marshmallow topping. You can get creative and have a sweet potato casserole that is still tasty and stunning. Here are several ideas for sweet potato casserole toppings that don't include a single marshmallow.

All year round, Target talks about how customers (actually, executives refer to shoppers as guests) can find lots of "affordable joy" in stores and online. Luckily, that seems to be extra true during the holidays. You know, when you have loads of cheer to spread but a limited budget to do so.

Between all of Target's special in-house brands — like Opalhouse, Threshold, Hearth & Hand, and even the kiddie line Pillowfort — there are hundreds and hundreds of great gifts to choose from. They're all totally stylish and well-designed, yet somehow also well-priced. That means you don't have to spend a fortune in order to wrap up a gift that you're excited to give.

To help you cross off everyone on your shopping list, we spent hours walking through a store and came up with this list of 20 great gifts that look way more expensive than they actually are.

Just like this past April, the CDC is once again warning consumers to stay away from romaine lettuce due to an E.coli outbreak. "Consumers who have any type of romaine lettuce in their home should not eat it and should throw it away, even if some of it was eaten and no one has gotten sick," the CDC explains in their announcement on Tuesday.

"How long does it take to microwave a 25lb turkey?" Carlota Andrés messaged to the family WhatsApp. Her famous father, chef, and humanitarian José Andrés, responded, aghast, in a mixture of English and Spanish that encompasses a horror perhaps not able to be contained in just one language. In fact, the younger Andrés was simply enacting the same prank that other young adults around the country have been all week.

I first saw the viral "microwaving a turkey" meme on Instagram, where my friend had posted a screenshot of her hilarious conversation with her mom. (If you aren't aware of the trend, people are texting their moms asking how long it would take to cook a 25-pound turkey in the microwave in hopes of getting a funny response, then posting a photo of the conversation on social media.)

To be honest, I was less concerned about the fact that she was planning on microwaving her turkey and more upset that I thought I hadn't been invited to her (fake) Friendsgiving. But after seeing a few more very similar posts, I quickly realized I had fallen prey to a meme.

I assumed it was all a joke. You can't actually cook a turkey in the microwave, right? But although people were playing a joke on their moms, the actual act of microwaving a turkey can be done successfully. According to the USDA, it's one of the many ways you can cook your Thanksgiving bird. Here's how long it would actually take.